Open Source Mac - Free, Open-Source software for OS X

[Walt Pawley]

On 5/30/07 10:37 AM -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

>On May 30, 2007, at 9:40 AM, paul beard wrote:
>
>>I'm getting a sense that people who use double-clickable
>>installers are somehow not "our sort of people." Goodness
>>knows we can always use more snobbery ;-)
>
>I wouldn't argue that at all.  I would instead argue that
>MacPorts is simply not READY to serve people who use
>double-clickable installers.   That has always been a design
>goal of MacPorts, but it's not there yet.  It has a ways to
>go.  It doesn't even know how many of its ports even build at
>a given time yet, much less have them all packaged up and
>ready to double click on. :-)

I use double-clickable installers and, though seemingly less
and less, Macports via CLI. Some people MUST use
double-clickable installers because they have little or no
chance of doing even simple command invocation from a CLI, much
less dealing with the manifold vagaries *nix ports.

There is another notion that, though not necessarily, goes
along with the double-clickable installer that is not part of
the gestalt of Macports, IMHO. That is that the
double-clickable installer contains all that's needed to
install the package on it's target.

I use a larger proportion of older equipment running older OSs
than newer stuff using current issue OSs and have found port
things that once worked, no longer do ... repeatedly. However,
if I dredge up an old installer on an old machine with an old
OS and double-click it, it still seems to get the job done as a
rule.
-- 

Walter M. Pawley <walt at wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97470
         541-672-8975